Book Clubs, the Socratic Way

Summary (feel free to move past this if you attended class & did the readings):

Last week in class, we discussed the different responses to our viewing the McGonigal video presentation which was interesting but the most interesting part of the night is when we gathered in our large cohorts to discuss the trends we saw in our different blogs.It was fascinating to see how people intepreted the same blog posts so differently. Certain bloggers that I found wisdom in other people found annoying.

This week's readings discussed how libraries can move past the traditional borrowing service and make a "bridge to entire community" and how educators can move past traditional lecturing to engaging ALL students in discussion.

Hoffert recommends a thematic approach to library book clubs, so that the library isn't slammed with 20 requests of the same title and more people in the community including teens and men are included. Ms. Hoffert also mentions a library can mix in other media with the books as well as inviting authors to participate. She really demonstrates going the extra mile as librarians.

Tredway profiles the uses of Socratic seminars in the classroom, when students read a text or study materals then engage in discussion about the text instead of their professor lecturing at them. This encourages critical thinking and, then eventually, critical writing.

Metzger describes how she tailored a Socratic seminar to run her high school literature classes. She found she could reach nearly all of students, even the ones who were considered "mediocre" readers and those with learning disabilities, and improve their reading AND comprehrension skills.

My Responses:

I firmly believe in teaching through Socratic seminars, when appropriate for the subject matter. The Honors Program at my undergrad taught all the classes using the Socratic method (very fitting when we studied Aristophanes and Plato). We'd closely read the text for the week and then discuss it in class, with
our professor providing important historical context or guidance, especially with the Greek texts. It's amazing how much I retained from those classes but even more so how much my wring improved. Comparing my freshman year essays to my senior year ones felt like comparing the writing of two different people. No other
classes affected my abilities while doing my undergraduate work.

A variation of the Socratic seminar comes to mind when thinking of elementary schools. Teachers read aloud from a story, a chapter or two every day and then engage the children in discussion about what's happening in the story and what they think will happen next (I'm recalling a specific direction during a recent subbing job). There are some flaws in what I've seen though; teachers do not always ask probing questions that really compel children to do more than reiterate what's happening and make predictions.

I loved that the students asked Ms. Metzger leave the discussion part of circles! Isn't that the goal of every teacher, to help their students become self-sufficient?

To bring the readings together, I see some potential for creating book clubs that run like Socratic seminars, so patrons get more out of them than just the usual agreement of "I liked this one" etc.